Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

Updated the WPF Calculator to use Splash Screen and improve perceived startup

Noticias externas — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:52:30 GMT

made some small bug fixes to my WPF Calculator sample app (that is/was already included in the .Net 3

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

sattvikvibes — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 08:46:05 GMT

hey, i had this working but I upgraded my project to vs2008. There is no rc.exe in the tools bin folder or anywhere in the Visual Studio 9.0 tree. I also did not see it in the vs2008 sdk - any ideas? Should I just use the rc.exe in vs2005?

thanks,

Dan

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

Krimson — Mon, 05 May 2008 15:37:20 GMT

When I create a png file with rounded corners and transparent background the background of the corners on the splash becomes black. Any idea why this happens?

Best regards,

Jesper

WPF 3.5 SP1 újdonságok

VBandi — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:15:39 GMT

Mint bizonyára hallottátok már, megjelent a .net 3.5 SP1 első bétája, vele a

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

Jebarson Vetha Rajin — Fri, 16 May 2008 01:27:05 GMT

Anybody have a working version for Visual studio 2008? This does not working with it since the rc.exe is missing

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

e28makaveli — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 21:13:54 GMT

Having same issue here with sample not working on VS2008. I have tried using rc.exe for VS2005 but this does not do it.

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

ehartwell — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:50:08 GMT

On my PC, with VS 2008 and the Windows 6.0A SDK,

1. rc.exe is in "Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\rc.exe"

2. the SDK include directory is "Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Include"

3. sal.h is in "Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include"

The pre-build event line, with hard-coded paths, looks like this:

Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Include" /i "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

ehartwell — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 23:51:14 GMT

That last line got clipped.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin\rc.exe" /d USE_PNG /i "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Include" /i "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\include" /r "$(ProjectDir)win32res.rc"

Now the sample works with VS2008. Thanks!

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

e28makaveli — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:55:11 GMT

Excellent, thanks. Works for me now.

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

ehartwell — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:35:06 GMT

Add the WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW flag to keep the splash window from showing up on the taskbar.

private const uint WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW = 0x00000080;

_splashScreenHwnd = CreateWindowEx(

CS_HREDRAW | CS_VREDRAW | WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW,

etc.

What’s new in WPF 3.5 SP1: Splash Screen to improve perceived startup perf

WPF Performance — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 23:23:10 GMT

Summary: To improve the perception of a more responsive startup experience many WPF applications added

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

msdn0117@sonic.com — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:36:00 GMT

Hi,

I was recently told that MILCore is legitimately removed (also seen this in person) by the .net 3.5 SP1 installer on XP. Basically want to make sure you are aware anyone using this code just entered a world of hurt if they distributed on XP.

Is there an explanation of why you felt MilCore.dll dependency was required for the png loading of the splash?

what are the side effects if you just remove MILCore dependency entirely and let the common runtime handle the garbage collection or use the Marshal.Release() on the pointers?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

jgoldb — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 06:41:42 GMT

As D. mentioned , since this sample has a dependency on milcore.dll (which was renamed to Wpfgfx_v0300.dll in .net 3.5 Sp1) it will not work on recently .net 3.5 Sp1.

For 3.5 Sp1 it is recommended hat you simply use the new built in Splash Screen APIs. (See this blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/jgoldb/archive/2008/08/12/what-s-new-in-wpf-3-5-sp1-splash-screen-to-improve-perceived-startup-perf.aspx)

The sample was written well before the decision to rename MILCore.dll in 3.5 Sp1 was made.

I’ll try to fix the sample so that it does not depend on milcore.dll.

Jossef.

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

msdn0117@sonic.com — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:37:15 GMT

A simple solution would be to allow the CLR to make the Release calls itself and handle the reference counts. (you would just remove any part of the sample that contains reference to milcore)

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

msdn0117@sonic.com — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:19:13 GMT

It appears after inspecting the memory usage with swapping the call for Marshal.Release that using Marshal.Release may be more robust.

I did speak with someone from msft and they seemed to be under the impression however that the CLR would take care of the interface references in this case.

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

b_grainger — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:14:13 GMT

I wanted to show a splash screen very quickly, so I wrote a small native application that can do so (without loading the CLR or any WPF assemblies). The native application launches my WPF application after the splash screen is displayed.

I've blogged all the code required to create this application at: http://code.logos.com/blog/2008/09/displaying_a_splash_screen_with_c_introduction.html

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

edwest86 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:30:06 GMT

Hi - I am using Method 3 by specifying open and close by myself. I am using an app with a NavigationWindow.

It appears that the SplashScreen is automatically closed by itself, even if I don't call close, when the NavigationWindow is navigated. Why is this? I still have the UI to load, etc., and don't want to be closed quite yet.... ?

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

jpchow — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:07:02 GMT

I compiled and built the code with .net 3.5 sp1 installed and it works fine.

re: Splash Screen To Improve WPF Application Perceived Cold Startup Performance

EinarB — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:17:11 GMT

Is it possible to get rid of the window border around the splash image?

(I can't make my application depend on 3.5 SP1 yet...)

WPF discussion, 090501

Jaime Rodriguez — Mon, 04 May 2009 09:22:23 GMT

You know the drill. Raw/unedited conversations from our internal discussions.  Subject: Datagrid